Category: Uncategorized

Drugs Make Me Cool is the blog of Sharon, comedy reviewer for The Comedy Lounge. I wasn’t sure if I should expect drug-induced lunacy or a news-type site – Drugs Make Me Cool is a very plain template Blogspot site.

Sharon, a self-proclaimed “television cynic,” is absolutely media-obsessed. She is currently working on a project to list and write about every TV show she watches “thereby exposing what a restricted social life I have.” There are some interesting things here, even if you’re not interested in television or comedy acts. There is a particularly funny chronology of breaking in new Doc Martins, which I can relate to, as well as a comical job hunt saga.

Drugs Make Me Cool would be better served by a new design. Sharon makes it perfectly clear that she doesn’t really know HTML and makes fun of herself for barely being able to install a guestbook. Still, Sharon’s stories are entertaining and a design more suited to her writing would give the site some punch. The only real problem with Drugs Make Me Cool is the occasional broken graphical links.

Drugs Make Me Cool is really a no frills blog. To make it a more user-friendly journal I would recommend a good About Me page or even a 100 Things list. Expanded navigational links might also be a good idea – an entire month of posts is listed on page and readers must continually go back to the Archives page to navigate to each month. This is just a personal preference type of thing, but I heartily recommend making a special entry page specifically for meme entries [Friday Fives, Monday Missions, etc.] – meme and quiz entries tend to break up the flow of reading for me.

Overall, Drugs Make Me Cool was an entertaining read. I would likely go back for another visit.

Dreadful Nonsense

Weblogs that are classified in the New/Links genre are often hard to review. Authors and creators of these sites just slap any random link into their site with little or no explanation of their own, and often just copy word for word text from the aforementioned link. This is a mindless activity that anyone can accomplish. The author of Filter Coffee takes his weblog containing the news links from current events several steps above that notch.

Such as the way things work on the World Wide Web when it comes to linking to another site, sometimes that link is no longer valid or has moved to a different URL – especially with news sites. My favorite entry was one that sent me on to a site where I could find a printable flowchart on how to respond to telemarketers when they call. I almost took offense to another one of Mahesh’s posts regarding the overworked, dumbed down call center employees. When not reviewing weblogs, I just happen to be one of those “deprived souls”. Then I followed the link to realize Mahesh was really referring to the call centers going up in India and the absurd way of Americanizing things that they’re forced to follow. Yes, I learned something from this weblog. Big points there!

The layout at Filter Coffee is very nice. It’s simple, the images used in it stay with the concept of the weblog’s title, it’s easy to navigate, the colors go well together, and anything else that makes a weblog look nice that I can think of is done here as well.

Filter Coffee is a relatively new weblog, but I would certainly consider it a unique and refreshing way to add to your daily national news intake.

Filter Coffee

The web log called “My November” not only looks good in November, but it is good and will be good the whole year round. Written by a twentysomething year-old bachelor from Detroit whose aspirations include freelance writing as well as an early retirement, Jamie uses his many thoughts and experiences as a kind of paint which in his words are thrown on the canvass (sic) of life. This is a collection of candid and frank thoughts mixed in with snapshots to prove his worth as a future photographer and film maker.

This blog is very new, only a month old for this review. In fact, the very first entry is dated November 1st. As the entry that day explains, it marks the very first day of Jamie’s life and the reason for the blog’s creative title. Rebirth and time to start all over again. So because it is relatively new, there may not be that much content yet. At least not compared with the more experienced bloggers among us. However, it is growing continuously as the days roll by, and I am sure that by the same time next year there will be an extensive collection of entries and pictures and all that kind of good stuff expected of a good blog. Up until to now Jamie has been writing just about every single day. Each time something interesting, new and refreshing.

This blog is too new for me to be able to give it an objective and fair score. As a reviewer, I am nonetheless expected to provide a score anyway. So Jamie you receive a good solid four from me. For the potential to grow and throw alot more paint on your canvas of life. Keep up the good work.My November

Other than the weblog, there’s not a lot to this site. There doesn’t have to be, though. It seems the point of this site is just to give the author a means of release for random writing. Throughout the entire weblog there were excerpts of poetry, mainly in a free verse format, and strings of descriptions that often seemed like scenes from a movie or passages from a short story or novel.

There’s a start to a photo gallery, with a section on the author’s trip to Vegas. The section is laid out very nicely, and hopefully there will be more added to the galleries because our author seems to be a very gifted photographer. Two short stories and a verse of sorts are also available to read through at this site.

Design-wise, there’s not a lot to this site. The design that is used, however, is a nice clean design giving off a simplistic ambiance, which is a good overall description of the site.

Overall, Dreamweapons didn’t leave me with a sense of wanting to come back time and time again on a consistent basis. The writing is very descriptive and very easy to find yourself right in the middle of, and certainly very enjoyable. The personal weblog feeling at this site, however, is certainly not there.

Dreamweapons

Disclaimer: I read basic Spanish only, so this review has been made possible with the help of my Spanish dictionary and the Babelfish translator. I do apologize to the writer of eCuaderno if my translations are off.

Jose, the sole writer of eCuaderno [literal translation: eNotebook], is a Communications professor. The reason for his blog is to share “news about Cyberculture and Weblogs.” eCuaderno really looks like a news blog. The design is very plain, but very functional.

Jose does accomplish his mission of sharing news, but it’s truly dry reading. It really is the quintessential news blog — just the facts. There is rarely any commentary on why a reader might find the facts interesting or useful. You’ll find information on a myriad of things that are happening online. Not everything is strictly of interest to the Spanish-speaking community.

If you have interest in keeping up with things that are new online and can read Spanish, you might really enjoy this blog. I would likely not return, as I have little interest in the subject and it’s too much of a hassle to translate everything.Cuaderno de Bitacora